The schedule below specifies the texts you are to read and the videos you should watch prior to completing each unit exam, as well as the due dates for exams. You can use the italicized weeks as a general guideline. If a link to a video doesn’t open by clicking on it, please copy and paste it into your browser.

*Please note, I have also provided links to any assigned short stories that aren’t in your textbook. However, nothing is permanent on the Web, so if the link to a title is no longer active, please conduct a Google search to find the work elsewhere (and send me an FYI email).

You’ll find discussion questions for each author to guide your weekly reading and as preparation for the Unit Exams. However, you will also choose *one question per author* to start a conversation with your peers

Answer to each questions chosen must meets word minimums (180 words minimum) through careful and thoughtful exploration of the possibilities inherent in the prompt, and shows a deeper (critical) engagement with the literature, rather than a superficial skimming. A good post supports ideas with textual references and offers a rich foundation for peer responses.

Weeks 1

UNIT 1

Literary Realism

Walt Whitman

Watch Video: http://www.learner.org/catalog/extras/vvspot/Whitm…

Walt Whitman “Song of Myself” stanzas 1-24 (23) “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (66) “Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking” (71) “The Wound Dresser” (76) “O Captain! My Captain!” (http://www.bartleby.com/142/193.html and Blackboard)

Emily Dickinson

Watch Video: http://www.learner.org/catalog/extras/vvspot/Dickinson.html

https://www.learner.org/series/amerpass/unit06/authors-4.html

(Dickinson’s poems are referenced by both numbers and first line “titles”)

Poems: #207: I Taste a Liqour Never Brewed; #236: Some Keep the Sabbath going to Church; #340: I Felt a Funeral in my Brain; #409: The Soul Selects her Own Society; #448: I Died for Beauty; #519: This is My Letter to the World; #591: I Heard a Fly Buzz when I died; #479: Because I could not stop for Death; #754: My Life has Stood a Loaded Gun; #1096: A Narrow Fellow in the Grass; #1263: Tell all the Truth but tell it slant; (Letters – highly recommended if you have time: http://www.emilydickinson.it/letters.html)

Ambrose Bierce

https://www.learner.org/series/amerpass/unit06/authors-2.html

“An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” (395)

You may also want to watch the Twilight Zone and Cannes Award winning (French) film version of Owl Creek Bridge below (all three links currently work!):

https://vimeo.com/15147706

https://youtu.be/EHqnSX4SJ_A

https://www.hulu.com/watch/440885

part two

Regional and Local Color fiction (A sub-period of Realism)

https://www.learner.org/series/amerpass/unit08/usingvideo.html

Mark Twain

https://www.learner.org/series/amerpass/unit08/authors-9.html

“The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County” (115)

Kate Chopin

https://www.learner.org/series/amerpass/unit08/authors-2.html

“The Story of an Hour” (542) “The Storm” (544)

History of Creoles and Cajuns in New Orleans http://www.knowla.org/entry/627/

(Week Three)

Sarah Orne Jewett “A White Heron” (516)

https://www.learner.org/series/amerpass/unit08/authors-7.html

Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

https://www.learner.org/series/amerpass/unit08/authors-4.html

“A New England Nun (640)

Charlotte Perkins Gilman

https://www.learner.org/series/amerpass/unit06/authors-5.html

“The Yellow Wallpaper” (844)